I fell into writing about health shortly after grad school, where I realized I didn't want to work in a lab for the rest of my life! My areas of interest are the brain and behavior, as well as what influences the decisions we make about our health, and how the media helps and hinders people's understanding of health issues. As an undergraduate, I studied English Literature and Biopsychology at Vassar College, and got my PhD in Biopsychology and Behavioral Neuroscience at CUNY's Graduate Center in New York City, where I grew up and live now. My day job is as Associate Editor with the health website, TheDoctorWillSeeYouNow.com. My work has appeared in several other publications, including TheAtlantic.com and YogaGlo.com, and I'm particularly excited to join the Forbes health team. Email me at alicegwalton [at] gmail [dot] com .

Internet Addiction: The New Mental Health Disorder?

There’s been a lot of controversy about some of the maladies included in the freshly revised Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Health Disorders (DSM-V). Internet addiction, or formally, Internet Use Disorder (IUD), may soon be included as an actual mental health disorder, although the authors do say it still needs a lot of additional study. So what are the symptoms of IUD, and maybe more importantly for those of us flirting with it, what’s the treatment?

Internet Use Disorder has the many of the basic hallmarks of any other addiction. According to the American Psychiatric Association, the crafters of the DSM-V, a person with IUD will experience “preoccupation” with the internet or internet gaming, withdrawal symptoms when the substance (internet) is no longer available, tolerance (the need to spend more and more time on the internet to achieve the same “high”), loss of other interests, unsuccessful attempts to quit, and use of the internet to improve or escape dysphoric mood.

There’s been more and more scientific research devoted to understanding what IUD is, how it works neurologically, and how we can treat it. Research has shown that people with internet addiction have demonstrable changes in their brains – both in the connections between cells and in the brain areas that control attention, executive control, and emotion processing. Most intriguing is the fact that some of these changes are what you see happening in the brains of people addicted to cocaine, heroine, special K, and other substances.

And other research has found that people who are hooked on the internet have changes in how the brain’s dopamine system operates – dopamine is generally credited for allowing us to experience pleasure and reward. Some studies have found that people with internet addiction have fewer dopamine receptors in certain areas of the brain, and others have suggested additional ways in which dopamine function might be impaired. And very recent studies have suggested how certain genetic variations might be involved in internet addiction.

If we accept that internet addiction or IUD is a legitimate mental health disorder, then what? How bad does it have to get before you get treatment, and for that matter, what is the treatment?

There’s been a smattering of horror stories about internet and gaming addiction: Parents who have let their children die while they played games hours on end, teens keeling over after day spent staring at a screen, or killing their parents after the object of desire was taken away. You might be right to suspect that there are other things at play in these episodes, but internet or gaming addiction may also be involved.

These cases represent the dark side of addiction, certainly, but internet addicts with a milder version of the disorder might argue that their dependence is actually beneficial, since it lets them be more productive professionally. At any hour of the day, your addiction will endow you with the capacity for lighting fast responses to work emails, making you a more valuable employee than your non-addicted colleague. That argument might hold water to some degree, but when it starts to intrude on your overall well-being, or sanity, or it takes precedence over time with your kids or spouse, then it might be time to cut back.

How to treat internet addiction is then the next question. One might suspect that treatment won’t be straightforward, since most of us have to use the internet at some level (or even a lot) throughout the day. In this way, it’s a bit like food addiction, which they say is the hardest to treat, since you can’t just quit the substance, you have to actually learn how to manage it. And for many people, managing is harder than quitting.

Some studies have found that cognitive behavior therapy (CBT) might be an effective method to treat IUD. This form of psychotherapy teaches people how to replace the damaging thought and behavior patterns that plague them with healthier, more productive ones. When people with internet addiction were taught how to apply CBT to their internet use problems, they reported improved well being and less of the offending behavior, internet use.

Researchers will keep trying to learn about what’s going on with our internet use these days, and how we can get a handle on it before it gets out of control. We’ll certainly keep apprised of the developments on internet addiction research (probably by combing the internet), and the best ways to manage it.

Does your internet use affect your life negatively? Have you tried to cut back? Please comment below.

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A point of clarification…There are 9 criteria they are going to “study”. Of these nine criteria, 7 deal specifically with Internet gaming. The other two are broader, specifically, “withdrawal symptoms when Internet is taken away” and “Continued excessive Internet use despite knowledge of negative psychosocial problems.” One has to wonder if they aren’t really focused on Internet gaming…as opposed to Internet use, a much broader behavior. Are those two out of nine suppose to be read separate and apart from the other seven, or all they all read together? I would think the later. My reasoning being, none of the other seven reflect a criteria like continued Internet gaming despite knowledge of negative psychological program OR withdrawal symptoms when Internet gaming is taken away. Normally DSM- criteria are read together and a diagnosis is not given unless a particular minimum number of criteria are met. Could one get a diagnosis of Internet Addition Disorder… based only on one or two criteria? Wow, anyone who needs to be online for a job…writing blogs, etc. might experience “withdrawal” …or might be working to hard on the Internet…. Would that mean they would get a diagnosis? Want if a person never gets online…yeah there are still games that don’t require Internet access. None of the criteria seem to address that. So if someone is playing games non stop…just not online… They have no issues? The experts you cited note there is a lot of study to be done…. That is an understatement. By the way, the Koreans are doing quite a bit of study on Internet gaming.

Thanks for your articles. Consider the concept of process addictions, all of which facilitate dissociation, adrenaline and shame cycles. Netaholism was a phrase coined in the early 90′s. I suspect there are Netaholics Anonymous groups online.

Well, in my personal point of view and observations or review of literature aboit this topic, I don’t believe in the IAD… what I mean?, I refer to a addictions in the way of their goals… go to internet is like to go to street. In te street we can find a lot of things, and in Internet we can find almost whatever we want… well, WHATEVER WE WANT!, so… is not the media, the place, is the thing that the place gives me… Addicted to internet sounds me like addicted to lollipops, when I use to eat some lollipops because it’s the only source of sugar that I know…. did somebody unterstood… Well, I’m not a professional in the medical ways, only i’m a free mind man… trying to be objective.

Thanks for this article, it’s very “ilustrative”, and have useful information, sorry my english, I’m a Chilean Psychology Student very interested in this topic, because isn’t touched in my country….

Have winds on your favor Forbes and Alice Walton.

PS: I had IAD… is a mental illness, so, in a heatlhy mind have no place to relapses, but when I talk about biochemical addictions, the body changes, and their structure have no the same memory to reconstruct it as the mind, tha body, will never be the same. I think, that it is a huge difference. Or am I been positive only?.

My internet use does not affect my life negatively. I have a endless library of information making me more satisfied. Why would I want to try to cut back? My time is wasted by ads, but I look forward to a better software.

I completely believe that I have a problem. It’s not just gaming. It’s searching things (whether health or sex), youtube clips, just about anything on the net. It’s not TV. I think that I am a product of thinking that its as harmless as TV. You can search around on websites like channel surfing. We really need more education about Internet Addiction before we have more problems. I definitely think it is impacting mental health issues.

Internet has changed our lives in many positive ways as in education, entertainment, and communication. But it also has a negative side to it which isthe addiction where people would isolate themselves from the real world.

This is absolutely not a disorder. It’s a bad habit. That’s all. This lunacy is just another nail in the coffin that psychiatry is unscientific and total quackery. We’re still waiting on that test to proven a chemical imbalance, too.

All these fools want is to create another disorder so they can expand their market, to make more money getting people on drugs.

Internet addiction is a problem in society, especially among the poor and homeless. I work in a public library in the public computer area. Each day many of the same people come to use the computers and stay all day. They are not searching for information or jobs they are playing games and on places like Facebook. These activities by themselves are not negative but engaging in them all day is not being productive to themselves or society. We have mothers coming in with their young children and staying all day. Some children will be well behaved for hours but eventually they become cranky and hungry and the parents of these children get angry at the child because their needs are disrupting their internet activities. I see parents get agitated with their children because they need to use the restroom. So yes internet use is an addiction. Like many other things in our lives, for some it is not an issue but for other it is. This in turn is not just the problem of the individual but a problem that will filter into society.